Contributed by Clare Cramond
Clara Sumners signed the petition just above Florence Tilley. They are likely to have been sisters-in-law.
Clara Tilley Sumners was born in Warwickshire, England about 1859. The 1861 Census of Bearley in Warwickshire shows the family of agricultural labourer William Tilley and his wife Emma with five children including Thomas aged 11 years and Clara aged one. By the 1871 census, Clara was still at home and her brother Thomas had left.
Clara married William Sumners at Christ Church Sparkbrook, Birmingham in 1878 and they had daughters Emily and Louisa by 1881. The census shows they were living in Warwickshire.
During the next two years, they must have made their way to Ashburton in Canterbury, possibly because Clara’s older brother Thomas had settled there after having lived at Waimate.
Clara and William had seven more children; Florence (1883), Edith (1885), William Charles (1887), Frederick George (1889) , Ada Mary (1893), Ethel Mildred (1898) and Ivy Hope (1901). A newspaper report from 1891 shows four of the daughters receiving prizes from Hampstead School.
They lived at Hampstead and the 1893 Electoral Roll shows both Clara and William (misspelled as Summers), noting William’s ownership of a freehold section and occupation as labourer.
Clara and William’s two sons served in the First World War.
William died in 1919 and Clara died in 1922. They are buried together at Ashburton Cemetery.
Sources
https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Tilley-4572
https://www.ancestry.com.au/ 1861 England Census, 1871 England Census
Ancestry.com. England, Select Marriages, 1538-1973 [database on-line]. Lehi, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/223017187/clara-sumner
Births Deaths and Marriages Online https://www.bdmhistoricalrecords.dia.govt.nz/
"New Zealand, Electoral Rolls, 1865-1957", Database. FamilySearch. https://familysearch.org
Papers Past https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/ Lyttleton Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 9603, 22 December 1891, page 6.
https://infoservices.adc.govt.nz/Cemeteries/RecordEnquiry?recordId=CEMIAS82521
Click on sheet number to see the 1893 petition sheet this signature appeared on. Digital copies of the sheets supplied by Archives New Zealand.
Community contributions